Reading with Babu

Babu has been fixated lately on the more glum things about being 99. And about the world. She complains more than she used to. By that I mean, she complains way less than she should but she never really used to complain at all. She hates that her hands are always cold and attributes it to the fact they are the first things on her to die. Oh boy that gets me in the feels. She has been in more crying spells than she used to. The formerly stoic Babu gets in tears over her husband, or the opiod epidemic she reads about it the paper, and for the first time about her grandmother. The subject of kittens, more to come on that later, is what got her going. I never had any she told me but my grandmother did. My grandmother was wonderful. and that was enough to get her teary eyed.

We spoke about her making it to 100 and she didn’t seem to want to make it there. She just sort of shook her head. That gets me in the feels, too.

She gets like this sometimes, and at other times she’s not like this at all. There is always a very complicated dance in trying to get her to understand that things are going to be a certain way due to her age, and reminding her of her age to stress care and compassion for herself, and avoiding reminding her of her age because, well, she hates it. I’m trying to get her to not try to clean anymore. I’m afraid she’ll tucker herself, fall, and she is so stingy with soap – if she uses it – and water. It’s not sanitary. But how do I tell her these things with out making her feel badly?

Well, show her her diary. Distract distract. I haven’t been showing them to her because I’ve either been busy or she is sleeping. No excuse because she loves it.

We read this passage:

Danced in the hall. I even danced with two strange boys.

from her august diary and her response was:

“That’s because I’m an easy dancer.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can dance with some one I never danced with before.”

“Because you’re so good?”

She pauses. She nods. “I saw a pretty good dancer.”

We laughed and had such a great time. Her eyes got wide reading about swimming. That’s something I wish she could sill do. She clearly loves it.

Then she read this passage:

Thursday, August 4th, 1938
The whole crowd of us “seven” went to Clayton’s beach at Hampden Ponds swimming. We swam till ten o’clock. Even dove off the board. We had a glorious time. The moon and stars were out. Frankie had a motorboat. For our way home we stopped at the “Handle” or “Algonquin” and had ice cream and watched moving pictures.

Then she had this to say:

“Don’t you think we had good boyfriends?…according to this?”

It lifted her spirits and my own and I need to do it more often. That may have to wait a week or so, however. My hands are now a little full.

It’s so hard to get good, focused pictures of them. They are faster than you think.

Do you want the cutest 2 second video? Here you go!

I’m fostering kittens. They lost their mom and I have to bottle feed them every two to four hours. When they’re ready to be adopted they will go back to the animal shelter to be adopted out. <3!!! But, what a great distraction for Babu.

Post navigation

This was a really touching entry – I can’t imagine looking back on these things from her perspective, but these little snippets you give of her now are glimmers of what it must be like. Thank you for sharing this.